IGN's Team Fortress 2 Q&A
talks with Robin Walker about Valve's coming shooter that was announced back in
the 20th century. Included is word that they have PC versus Xbox 360 gameplay
working, which may or may not be a feature of the finished project, but either
way, there's little chance that PS3 owners will be able to compete with PC
owners, and no chance that the PS3 edition will support cross-platform gameplay
with the Xbox 360:

Robin Walker: From our perspective, we did the
Xbox port of Half-Life internally, and we did that because we wanted to have the
expertise from doing that. Like controller expertise and all the sorts of
decisions you've got to make that are different on consoles we wanted to have
that in-house because we knew we'd be doing more Xbox titles and more console
titles. And so the same guys that did that are working on TF2, we have all the
tweaks we did to the controls, the sticks and everything. One of the advantages
of TF2, relative to something like Counter-Strike, is that it's not so much
about aim. Some of the classes like the sniper it is about aim, but as an
engineer or a heavy or spy, aim's not too important, it's more about the
decisions you're making other than aim. I mean heavy has a big hose so you just
have to keep people somewhere in the middle of the screen and they're going to
take damage from you.

IGN: What about the PS3 version?

Doug Lombardi: The PS3 version is being done by EA over in the UK, and
they don't have all the networking stuff in yet to do anything other than
[pause] it's rending and running the games and whatnot, but they're still
dropping in the network layers. They're going to be using a piece of code that
EA uses for its PS3 multiplayer stuff. Chances are the PS3 version will only
play other PS3s. There's zero chance of them talking to 360s.

Robin Walker: Yeah if PS3 and Xbox people play together they'd just argue
the whole time.

Being able to do damage with the weapons isn't a measure of how effective a consoler will be able to play the game. That won't help consolers from getting their ass handed to them, because aim does in fact matter in TF, as it does in any FPS game.

The use of the weapons wasn't "you just have to keep people somewhere in the middle of the screen and they're going to take damage from you"

Raven already covered this, but... yeah, yeah it was.

Engineer was not about fighting, and what he had was a shotgun.Spy was not about fighting.Soldier had a rocket launcher - lots of radius damage.Demoman had a grenade launcher, absolutely no accuracy there.Medic wasn't about fighting, and he had a shotgun.Scout was about speed, not fighting. You had a shotgun, too.HWG was completely spray-and-pray with absolutely no accuracy. You just fired in an area and gave damage to everyone in it.Pyro was absolutely no accuracy. You just fired in a small area and roasted everyone in it.

The sniper was really the only class that REQUIRED accuracy. Some would benefit from it, with a nailgun or tranquilizer dart, but others, like the Pyro and HWG, required next to zero accuracy.

Actually, having played the original TF since 1996 when it was first created, this has ALWAYS been true. The engineer runs round creating his emplacements, building the turrets, the teleporters, the ammo boxes; sometimes, the engineer has to fight, but that's only a small part of his job, so aim is NOT that important.

The spy runs around pretending to be a member of the other team... he only pulls the trigger once he's snuck up behind someone, so twitch reflexes aren't that important. The HWG gun is like a rapid fire shotgun... the spread is huge, any even having the bad guy vaguely in the center of your crosshair will work.

This isn't about dumbing down the controls... this is about allowing multiple truly different playstyles for the classes, something rather absent from most class based games. And their decisions to have these different playstyles is over 10 years old, and has nothing to do with making a console version.

/f it. Lets see what happens when it comes out - but I am sure it won't take anything away from my DoD and DoD Source time.

**********************************************"Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war." This comment was edited on Apr 12, 16:10.

Some of the classes like the sniper it is about aim, but as an engineer or a heavy or spy, aim's not too important, it's more about the decisions you're making other than aim. I mean heavy has a big hose so you just have to keep people somewhere in the middle of the screen and they're going to take damage from you."

Which is what will make the game annoying to a lot of PC FPS players.

I pray there is a group that does a TF2 "Reality" mod.I understand that the fun factor of TF2 is the over the top stuff, but the original following was for more realistic weapons, etc.

Fuck it, I don't care if I'm playing my xbox 360 or PC against a PS3 user, although I can't justify the purchase of sonys machine right now, who is to say other people cannot? Why do people consider the owners of consoles to be illiterate thugs? (Ok, Halo 2 online with voicechat kind of proves this to be the case the majority of the time... but PC games online are not much better.)

My PC probably has better controls, but my xbox probably has better framerate. And a comfy couch. And maybe there is a mouse on the way? CnC3 and Quake 3 arena will surely get the demand going.

PS3 fully supports USB keyboard/mouse combos, so you could see PS3 gamers using those controls for an FPS if the support was designed for it.

Resistance had it disabled by the developers for fear of it giving too much of an upper hand in multiplayer from what I understand, but I see no reason it wouldn't be included for a game that could potentially have cross-platform matches.